Diasporic Consciousness 2ml1v

Lecturer: Melanie R. Wattenbarger; [email protected]

University of Mumbai: English Department Paper VII: Studies on Indian Diasporic Fiction Rogers Brubaker, “The ‘Diaspora’ Diaspora” in Ethnic and Racial Studies 28:1 (2005) 1-19. For class on Monday 15 September, read the article enclosed and answer each question below in 1-2 paragraphs. Be prepared to discuss your answers in class.

1. What is your working definition of ‘diaspora’? a. rootlessness, alienation, leaving land, creation of new cultures [transplantation, hybridity BHABHA!!!] b. traditional definition [Jewish diaspora Armenian diaspora: Tölölyan; Greek roots of the term diasporien “to sow, completely”]; Sudesh Mishra: collective dispersion of communities, either voluntary or involuntary c. hyphenated identities, longing for imagined homeland [Rushdie, Anderson], expectations from the host country d. 3 core elements: dispersion, homeland, boundary maintenance; not only displacement, but keen communal sense of displacement: grouplessness, alienation, confusion concerning belonging; “diasporic consciousness” [Parameswaran, Bharucha] e. people of country dispersed over other countries over time and subsequent generations immigration and emigration: direction pull and push factors [economies, colonial dispersions] Communities: those left behind in the land of emigration; new context moving into immigration; thinking pre-em/immigration [Gender and Caste] sending and receiving countries

1st World: developed countries: i. e. WEST 2nd World: Soviet Union 3rd World: “Global South” not Australia ARBITRARY!!! Occidental [Edward Said] Euro-Americentric*** neocolonialism  Franz Fanon Black Skin White Masks; Wretched of the Earth  Hegel Phenomenology of the Spirit--- Master-Slave dialectic; internalization of the dependency on the master on the part of the slave hegemonic world power

2. What is the relationship between diaspora and migration? a. difference: migration is people going to other countries, perhaps for a limited amount of time, usually for employment reasons; if stay become a diaspora: continuum migration into diaspora b. movement from one place to another; migration as a word refers to unidirectional; exilic feeling; largely associated to labor [‘snowbirds’]; does not always result in a diaspora: c. element of diaspora; where “diasporic consciousness” begins to take form; rooting of ‘d. c.’ migrate, chance to leave behind homeland identity ; hyphenated, double identity [hostland, home land: land of emigration, land of birth, motherland, fatherland] [Bhabha “unhomliness”; Avtar Brah d. migrants may be marginalized in original homeland, moving from position of ‘unprivledge’; waves of migration due to history, changes in policy, economics e. I agree 2b. Diaspora and transnationalism? a. compare to transnationalism: more dynamic, free-flowing back and forth [with technology: diasporic migration not always as painful;

longing and nostalgia] Inheritance of Loss: Kiran Desi; larger opportunities for keeping in touch, economic betterment 3. How is Brubaker’s employment of ‘diaspora’ as a stance or analytical tool useful when discussing Indian diasporic fiction? Not physical group of people; Practice, Project, Stance; Claim self-appelation: giving a name for oneself or ones situation Women after marriage in a diasporic stance: not a group, but a way to theorize their experience Inheritance of Loss: Tea Parties

William Safran: (1991: 83 – 4) 

“They, or their ancestors, have been dispersed from an original ‘centre’ to two or more foreign regions.”

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They retain a collective memory, vision or myth about their original homeland including its location, history and achievements.”

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“They believe they are not – and perhaps can never be – fully accepted in their host societies and so remain partly separate.”

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“Their ancestral home is idealized and it is thought that, when conditions are favourable, either they, or their descendants should return.”

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“They believe all of the diaspora should be committed to the maintenance or restoration of the original homeland and to its safety and prosperity; and” [Khalistan; Ghadar Movement in California]

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“They continue in various ways to relate to that homeland and their ethnocommunal consciousness and solidarity are in an important way defined by the existence of such relationships.”

Robin Cohen: 1. “Dispersal from an original homeland, often traumatically, to two or more foreign regions.”

2. “Alternatively, the expansion from a homeland in search of work, in pursuit of trade or to further colonial ambitions.” 3. “A collective memory and myth about the homeland, including its location, history and achievements.” 4. An idealization of the putative ancestral home and a collective commitment to its maintenance, restoration, safety and prosperity, even to its creation.” 5. “The development of a return movement that gains collective approbation.” 6. “A strong ethnic group consciousness sustained over a long time and based on a sense of distinctiveness, a common history and the belief in a common fate.” 7. “A troubled relationship with host societies, suggesting a lack of acceptance at the least or the possibility that another calamity might befall the group.” [Komagata Maru in British Columbia and its effect on the development of Sikh identity and conceptions of belonging] 8. “A sense of empathy and solidarity with co – ethnic in other countries of settlement; and” 9. “The possibility of a distinctive creative, enriching life in host countries with a tolerance for pluralism.” Khachig Tölölyan: 

“Exilic’ here means that not living in the homeland is regarded as a loss, a deficiency, as painful distance from a centre, which is only sometimes a religiously sacred centre.”

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34 “The precariousness of national identity in exile leads the diaspora to rely on the homeland, to believe that the characteristic mores and values anchoring national identity pertaining, for example, to sex and gender, family and hierarchy, language and religion, duty and sacrifice, can at least be maintained, or, if lost, can be restored, in and by with the homeland.”

Avtar Brah: Diaspora space is the intersectionality of diaspora, border, and dis/location as a point of confluence of economic, political, cultural and psychic processes. It addresses the global condition of culture, economics and politics as a site of ‘migrancy’ and ‘travel’ which seriously problematises the subject position of the ‘native’. My central argument is that diaspora space as a conceptual category is ‘inhabited’ not only by those who have migrated and their descendants but equally by those who are constructed and represented as indigenous. In other words, the concept of diaspora space (as opposed to that of diaspora) includes the entanglement of genealogies of dispersion with those of ‘staying put’.

Rogers Brubaker: Transethnic and transborder linguistic categories, for example-- such as Francophone, Anglophone and Lusophone ‘communities’ (a word that should be used only in inverted commas [Baumann 1996])-- have been conceptualized as diasporas. So, too, have global religious ‘communities’, including Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Confucian, Huguenot, Muslim and Catholic diasporas.3 It appears to be little more than sheer dispersion that underwrites the formulation of such populations as ‘diasporas’.

“One dimension of dispersion, then, involves the application of the term diaspora to an ever-broadening set of cases: essentially to any and every nameable population category that is to some extent dispersed in space.8”

Criteria: 1. Dispersion 2. Homeland Orientation 3. Boundary-Maintenance

“To overcome these problems of groupism, I want to argue that we should think of diaspora not in substantialist as a bounded entity, but rather as an idiom, a stance, a claim. We should think of

diaspora in the first instance as a category of practice, and only then ask whether, and how, it can fruitfully be used as a category of analysis.26 As a category of practice, ‘diaspora’ is used to make claims, to articulate projects, to formulate expectations, to mobilize energies, to appeal to loyalties.27 It is often a category with a strong normative change. It does not so much describe the world as seek to remake it.”

Farzana Doctor “Stealing Nazreen” Nasreen? Power: Hegel Phenomenology of Spirit, Fanon, Judith Butler and Michel Foucault

Diaspora vs. Immigrant Community: 

“a point strongly emphasized by Marienstras (1989: 25), is that ‘time has to ’ before we can know that any community that has migrated ‘is really a diaspora.’

Tölöyan: nodal networks of transnational diasporic communities